Electrically operated vehicles or partially electrically operated vehicles, such as hybrid vehicles, become increasingly important. These vehicles are characterized by low noise emissions and low exhaust emissions, which is advantageous particularly in urban areas. Additionally, electrically operated vehicles allow the use of renewable energies for transportation purposes. This way, the CO2-emission can be reduced.
However, purely electrically operated vehicles are presently less suited for longer distances due to the short range and the relatively long charging periods of the energy storage units, such as batteries. Therefore, vehicle manufacturers of electrically operated vehicles frequently equip them with an additional internal combustion engine (hybrid vehicles). This allows purely electric driving modes with limited range and then, in case of the electric store being discharged, for example, switching to operation via the internal combustion engine. Today, purely electrically operating vehicles are limited in their range and require a charging period of several hours. Therefore, these purely electrically operating vehicles are suitable particularly for inner-city use and for commuters.
In order to expand the operational area of electrically operated vehicles, it is necessary to avoid the disadvantage of long charging periods of the energy stores. For this purpose, there are concepts, known as changing stations, which allow the simple and quick exchange of discharged energy stores of the vehicle for a charged energy store. The discharged energy store can then be recharged in a conventional fashion, thus over a period of several hours. Thus, the long charging period of the energy store is no longer connected to the operation of the vehicle and, after the exchange of the energy storage unit, the vehicle is immediately ready for further driving.